William Friedkin Interview

The Director Of The Exorcist Is Back

Quick Bio

As the iconic director of classic films like The Exorcist and The French Connection, William Friedkin is one of America’s great cinematic pioneers, but even at age 76, the director isn’t content to rest on his laurels. And thanks to his new collaboration with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tracy Letts (with whom he also collaborated on the acclaimed Bug in 2006), Friedkin has effectively reinvigorated his career, along with his flair for crafting dark thrillers and shocking audiences.

Their latest joint venture, Killer Joe, is likewise based on one of Letts’ hit plays, and after its outrageous climactic scene stunned theatergoers at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival (it involves Matthew McConaughey and a piece of fried chicken), Killer Joe was tagged with an NC-17 rating by the MPAA. And, make no mistake, the twisted Texas trailer-park thriller earns it.

Darkly comedic, the film stars McConaughey as the titular Joe, a professional assassin whose day job as a homicide detective affords him a certain competitive advantage. Things start to go south when the charismatic hit man is hired by Chris (Emile Hirsch) to exterminate his deadbeat mom as part of an insurance scam -- and uses his younger sister (Juno Temple) as collateral.

On the heels of the film’s premiere in Toronto, we talked with Friedkin about courting controversy, his legacy and why he doesn’t think Killer Joe is any more violent than Transformers.

This is your second collaboration with Tracy Letts. What is it about his work that appeals to you as a director?

William Friedkin: I think he’s the best drama writer in the United States. He has a unique way of capturing sides of human nature that you don’t often see honestly portrayed and without any judgment. And he and I are sort of on the same page with our worldview. Now, don’t interpret that as meaning we think the world is sh*t or something like that. We think there’s good and evil in everyone, and he writes characters that portray that.

There’s a lot of violence in the film.

WF: No, it’s not very violent. You want to see violence, see Transformers, where some big Erector Set guy kills thousands of people. Or any of the other films that are rated PG, for children. The reason you might think it’s violent is because the violence seems to be real when it does occur. But we don’t set out to promote violence, and I don’t happen to like it. Either in cinema or in life. But there are situations where it occurs, and they’re often highly dramatic.

This is a violent, angry family. It’s typical of many families around the world. And the violence explodes within the family setting. In fact, Joe Cooper, the character played by Matthew McConaughey, comes into this family and takes the little girl out of a very bad situation. I don’t feel the film is too violent. It may be for some. I don’t dispute that.

But there are a lot of shocking scenes in the film. Was it your goal to confront the audience in that way?

WF: I always confront the audience. There are several ways to approach making a movie. One is to do something that just lulls them into either not giving a damn or saying, “Oh, that’s interesting.” And that’s the worst review I could imagine seeing: “This is an interesting film.” Boy, I hate to see that. But confronting the audience? I don’t feel that I did confront the audience, but maybe we did.

What made you interested in doing a film about family violence?

WF: I’ve seen it. I grew up in a large apartment building in Chicago, and when I was a child, there was casual violence on every floor -- family violence, not robberies or murderers coming in, but within families. It wasn’t in my family, I must say. I loved my mother and father and had a very wonderful relationship with them, but I saw it as I grew up.

You know, most people experience things in their lives that make them angry, and they generally don’t act it out, and it just piles up inside you. And one day it’s going to explode in strange, mysterious and violent ways. That’s going on all around us. I’m not interested in Transformer movies and stuff like that. I’d rather make a film about the human drama and the human comedy.

And this family certainly has a pretty dysfunctional dynamic.

WF: I think that the character played by Juno Temple, who is to me really the focus of this film, is struggling to find a way to break loose from her father and her brother. Her mother tried to kill her, so she isn’t really sad if her mother gets retribution. And her brother and her father have abused her -- I don’t mean sexually, I don’t know if they have sexually. I don’t think Tracy knows either. But the implication is there -- she’s certainly abused.

And she to me is like a Cinderella character who’s looking for a Prince Charming, and at the end of this film, she finds him. He just happens to be a hired killer. And yet he’s Prince Charming in that he takes her out of this horrible world that she’s in.

Would you say greed is the biggest motivating factor in the film?

WF: Well, you know, greed is one of the seven deadly sins, and the operative word is "deadly." And often people who are practicing greed are undone. Greed is what drives the motivation of everyone but Joe. I don’t think he’s greedy. He certainly is needy. But he knows how to take control more than the others. The other characters are completely out of control in their lives, as are many of us.

How much changed from the stage version of Killer Joe?

WF: Well, the characters are the same, but there are more characters. There are more scenes. Tracy reimagined his play as a movie, and it has many [more] locations, but it wasn’t just opened up to be opened up. We both wanted to show the world in which it was set. And so we took a lot of pains to make sure that it’s set in a real place.

Considering it’s been almost 40 years now since The Exorcist, do you see yourself as a pioneer?

WF: No, I just see myself as I imagine you see yourself, as a working guy. You know? That’s all. And that’s enough. I love to direct films, I loved to have had the opportunity to direct them. I know that they are of varying quality. But I never know that when I do them. It’s years later that I figure out where I may have made missteps.